› added 6 months ago

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TIL blowflies repeatedly "puke" a droplet of liquid out of their body and suck it back in to cool themselves via evaporation

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WWL8 TIL the mystery Dum Dum flavor is a mixture of the end of one batch and the beginning of the next so production can seamlessly transition.
69M8m TIL in 1857, before Minnesota became a state, there was a bill passing through the territorial legislature to move capital from St. Paul to St. Peter. Chairman of the Enrolled Bills committee Joseph Rolette took the bill and disappeared with it, preventing it from reaching the governor's desk.
mx6AR TIL The recorder was a very serious instrument in the Renaissance, Baroque periods, and reached its zenith in the Baroque. But it was overcome by the needs of louder orchestras, and so the transverse flute [held sideways] became the instrument of choice
1aXD TIL in 2005 Snapple tried to make the world’s largest popsicle but instead the 17.5 tons of ice melted prematurely and “[flooded] Union Square in downtown Manhattan with kiwi-strawberry-flavored fluid”
M7mMm TIL that Erector Set inventor Alfred Carlton Gilbert also designed a toy lab set using radioactive material that was sold in 1950. The toy's amount of radiation exposure was equivalent to a day's UV exposure from the sun, provided that the radioactive samples were not removed from their containers.